物理学史与哲学

I use Supergravity as a test case to study the role and uses of elegance/simplicity in formulating and evaluating physical models, whose sole criterion is of course truth: an observationally verified description of Nature within a certain…

This article discusses the relationship between emergence and reductionism from the perspective of a condensed matter physicist. Reductionism and emergence play an intertwined role in the everyday life of the physicist, yet we rarely stop…

The idea that gauge theory has 'surplus' structure poses a puzzle: in one much discussed sense, this structure is redundant; but on the other hand, it is also widely held to play an essential role in the theory. In this paper, we employ…

Kant put forward the notion of the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA) in his manuscript ${\it A\; Critique\; of\; Pure\; Reason}$. In this note I review the TA in light of the detection of gravitational wave radiation. While the notion of the TA…

Relationships between current theories, and relationships between current theories and the sought theory of quantum gravity (QG), play an essential role in motivating the need for QG, aiding the search for QG, and defining what would count…

We are undertaking a detailed investigation, based on the available evidence, of the sequence of events that led to the historical discovery of the first Quasar 3C273.

From an astronomical and relativistic point of view, the Great War began with the August, 1914 capture and imprisonment of the members of a German eclipse expedition that had gone to the Crimea to look, at the request of Einstein, for…

Here we present an analysis of the paper "Universelle Bedeutung des Wirkungsquantums" (The universal meaning of the quantum of action), published by Jun Ishiwara in German in the "Proceedings of Tokyo Mathematico-Physical Society 8 (1915)…

Commented translation of the paper "Universelle Bedeutung des Wirkungsquantums", published by Jun Ishiwara in German in the Proceedings of Tokyo Mathematico-Physical Society 8 106-116 (1915). In his work, Ishiwara, tenured at Sendai…

In the 80th anniversary book for Alex M\"uller I wrote a story of our scientific collaboration, Shared Fascinations. This time I will be more personal, about the human side of our collaboration and encounters, while also referring to…

English translation of a Russian article from 1928. Translator's abstract: The article presents general considerations on the validity of the superposition principle for light in vacuo from out a quantum theoretic point of view. It contains…

The evolution of Physics between the second half of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century is presented coupling art and science, in the framework of Ferrara. The main characters are Giuseppe Bongiovanni, Professor of…

Recently it was shown that classical "relativistic" particle dynamics was implicit in physics going back to Maxwell. The demonstration utilized a simple modification of a 1906 thought experiment by which Einstein established the mass…

We revisit the early work of Minkowski and Sommerfeld concerning hyperbolic motion, and we describe some geometrical aspects of the electrodynamic interaction. We discuss the advantages of a time symmetric formulation in which the material…

After a brief presentation of Feynman diagrams, we criticizise the idea that Feynman diagrams can be considered to be pictures or depictions of actual physical processes. We then show that the best interpretation of the role they play in…

This paper examines two cosmological models of quantum gravity (from string theory and loop quantum gravity) to investigate the foundational and conceptual issues arising from quantum treatments of the big bang. While the classical…

We describe the road which led to the construction and exploitation of electron positron colliders, hightlighting how the young physics student Bruno Touschek met the Norwegian engineer Rolf Wideroe in Germany, during WWII, and collaborated…

In an imaginary conversation with Guido Altarelli, I express my views on the status of particle physics beyond the Standard Model and its future prospects.

An account of determinism and indeterminism in physics, addressed to non-physicist readers, leading up to proposals for how to understand statements about the future and single-event probability, motivated by quantum mechanics.

In 1822, Cauchy presented the idea of traction vector that contains both the normal and tangential components of the internal surface forces per unit area and gave the tetrahedron argument to prove the existence of stress tensor. These…